Abdîzâde Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn Yasar · İKİNCİ BÂB · BİRİNCİ FASIL
Encyclopedia · History of Amasya, Volume 6, p. 99 • Edited by: Doç. Dr. Recep Orhan ÖZEL - Doç. Dr. Metin HAKVERDİOĞLU
Amasya serdârı Kasâb Bekir oğlu Hacı Mehmed Ağa’nın oğludur. Yeniçeri olup 1182’de Rus harbine gitdi. 1184’de bilâ-emr avdet etdiğinden 1185’de tekrâr sevk edildi. Bu sefer yararlıklar gösterip terakki gördü.
1191 senesinden i’tibâren defâ’atle Amasya serdârı, 1203’de Rus harbinde oldukça şecâ’etler gösterdi. Ba’dehû Haseki pâyesi aldı. Haseki Bekir Ağa diye iştihâr ederek yine defâ’atle Amasya serdârı oldu. 1216 hudûdunda [301] vefât etdi. Yeniçeri a’yânından idi.
He was the son of Kasap Bekiroğlu Hacı Mehmed Ağa, serdar of Amasya. He became a janissary and in 1182 [1768–69] went to the war with Russia. Because he returned without leave in 1184 [1770–71], he was sent to the front again in 1185 [1771–72]. This time he showed valor and rose in rank.
From 1191 [1777] on he was serdar of Amasya many times; in 1203 [1788–89] he showed considerable gallantry in the war with Russia. He then received the rank of haseki. Becoming famous as "Haseki Bekir Ağa," he again served many times as serdar of Amasya. He died around 1216 [1801–02]. He was one of the leading men among the janissaries.
The office Hüsameddin calls "serdar of Amasya" in this entry differs from the grand title of serdar given to viziers commanding campaigns. As Abdülkadir Özcan explains, the leading officers of the senior and retired janissaries known as "korucu" and "oturak," appointed by the janissary ağa to maintain order and policing in smaller places, were also called janissary serdars. In the eighteenth century, in most towns this office stayed in the hands of locally influential families, and district serdars came to be chosen largely from among the serdengeçti ağas and the notables (âyân) with the wealth to recruit janissaries in the provinces. A study of the Hasançavuşzades in Menteşe shows the same picture: the family rose through offices such as serdengeçti ağalık, janissary serdarship and mütesellimlik, and in this way built a lasting tie with the Janissary Corps.
The position of the Kasap Bekiroğlus in Amasya is understood within this framework. In the same volume Hüsameddin wrote a separate entry for Kasap Hacı Ebûbekir Ağa, who may be regarded as the founder of the family. According to him, this Ebûbekir Ağa, of the people of the Hacı İlyas quarter, was a janissary who distinguished himself in the Prut war, became serdar of Amasya, serdengeçti ağası in the Persian war, and from 1145 [1732–33] kır serdarı (rural serdar); in 1157 [1744] he was made binbaşı (commander of a thousand) on condition that he protect the surroundings of Amasya, and he died in early 1159 [1746]. His sons Mehmed, Abdülfettâh and Abdülbâkî Ağa and their descendants were called "Kasap Bekiroğulları." Haseki Bekir Ağa, whose biography is given in this entry, was the son of Hacı Mehmed Ağa, that is, the grandson of the family's founder. Kasap Bekiroğlu Hacı Ebûbekir Ağa, who appears on the following pages of the same volume, is from another branch of the family, the son of serdar Abdullah Ağa. That one family served as serdars over three generations shows that this office in Amasya, too, had become a sphere of influence passed from father to son. No information on Haseki Bekir Ağa was found in other sources.
The Hacı İlyas quarter, where the family lived, was still a crowded Muslim quarter in the nineteenth century; in the 1840 population register studied by Selim Özcan, 93 households are recorded in the quarter.
Bekir Ağa's military life spans two great Ottoman-Russian wars. The first war, in which he took part in 1182, is the one that began in 1768 and ended in 1774 with the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca. The unauthorized return that Hüsameddin calls "bilâ-emr avdet" was a frequent problem in these wars. Mehmet Mert Sunar's finding for the later war of 1806–1812 shows that the situation was no different in the two great wars of the second half of the eighteenth century: most of the soldiers who came went back to their home towns in the winter months, and the "meşta (winter) soldier" arrangement introduced to prevent this did not produce the desired result. That Bekir Ağa was sent to the front again a year later shows that the Corps tried to send such deserters back; that he showed valor on his second journey was a turning point for him.
The war in which he showed gallantry in 1203 [1788–89] is the Ottoman-Russian war declared in August 1787 and ended by the Treaty of Jassy in 1792. The rank of haseki that he received after this war made him a figure known in Amasya as "Haseki Bekir Ağa."
The janissary hasekis were members of the privileged companies established in the time of Mehmed the Conqueror to accompany the sultan on hunts and keep hunting dogs. According to Abdülkadir Özcan, each of these companies had a commander called "haseki ağa"; they accompanied the sultan by walking at the right and left of his horse when he went to the mosque, and from time to time also served as devshirme officials. The title Bekir Ağa received was a "paye," that is, not the office itself but its prestige and rank. That a provincial janissary serdar was given such a paye in return for wartime service gave him in Amasya a standing derived from the Corps' hierarchy in Istanbul.
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Academic studies
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